Mexico: Amores Perros (2000)

The film begins with a car accident in Mexico that produces the crossing of the lives of three very different people. Director,  Alejandro González Iñárritu, makes an amazing job telling the audience the story of each of these lives while keeping them in wait of the unexpected.

The first person involved in the accident is Octavio, a man who lives with his mother, his brother Ramiro, and his brother's wife, Susana. Ramiro is a thieve and specializes in assaulting banks and is very abusive with his wife. Susana is pregnant, but she doesn’t want the baby. Octavio is in love with Susana and wants her to run away with him and abandon his brother. Octavio uses his dog “Cofi” in “Dog fighting contests” in order to earn money. Octavio makes enough money to run away with Susana, but Susana takes the money and leaves with her husband. Octavio continues his dog fighting business until a rival owner shoots his dog Cofi. Octavio stabs the rival owner and finds himself in a car chase with his lifelong friend, Jorge, and the wounded dog. A collision follows; Jorge dies and Octavio is badly injured. Ramiro is killed in a bank of their attacks.

The second person in the accident is Valeria, a model. At the beginning of the movie, we see her taking on a large floor where she plans to live with her lover Daniel Estrada, a married man who leaves his family in order to be with her. In the accident, Valeria’s leg is badly wounded. During her convalescence, her dog Richie disappears into a hole that on the ground of the apartment between floors. The dog does not return before the end of the film and the model becomes obsessed with getting him back. At the end Valeria loses her leg because she has gangrene. Her life as a model is unfortunately finished. 

The third and final person involved in the accident is a bum, also known as "The Goat". He is a former guerrilla fighter, and now kills people for money.  He lives alone with a great amount of dogs that he considers his family. In the story, we discover he has a daughter who he doesn’t talk to although he checks on her constantly from the distance. In the accident he rescues Cofi ( Octavio’s dog) and unfortunately Coif kills his dogs. “The Goat” then understands that killing is wrong and decides not to kill the next target he had been hired to kill.  

This becomes a life changing experience that makes him realize that he has to start again.

He goes home to his daughter, and leaves money in her bed. He leaves a message on her answering machine, but fails to tell her he loves her. In the end, he sells his car and goes to the desert.

The themes of this movie are: Love, Passion, betrayal, poverty, vanity, revenge. It is a movie that is filled with so many situations that in keeps the audience connected to the three stories trying to understand where these plots meet and make sense.

It is a masterpiece that provides the audience with so many content that it keeps them stack to their sits. The Director makes an excellent job in the management of the stories and the synchronization of the scenes.

Every story leaves a moral; every story leaves a message; every story is the description of a human aspect in which perhaps most of the viewers can feel identified with. Bravo!

Ecuador: Ratas Ratones y Rateros 1999

The story takes place in the country of Ecuador. Salvador (Bustos) is a young thief who entertains himself with petty crimes such as stealing hubcaps in Quito (Ecuador’s capital city). 

His life changes when Angel (Valencia), his cousin arrives to Quito from Guayaquil in search of easy money. Angel is a hardcore criminal who is running away from people he owes money to. Eventually he is tracked down and he and Salvador are closed to being killed.

SEBASTIAN CORDERO

Born in Quito, Ecuador, 1972. 

He studied film at the University of Southern California.

His first movie was Ratas, ratones, rateros. 

His second movie “Crónicas”

Was recognized with the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award.

Other movies : 

Rabia

Pescador

This Ecuadorian movie  deals with issues such as:

 - crime, drugs, vandalism

 - violence 

 - Poverty

It represents the common problems seen in Ecuador’s lower  social classes . 

With few logistic resources, the film was able to demonstrate  the reality of a society that struggles to survive the country’s  economic hardship.

Ratas, ratones y Rateros is a movie that, perhaps, pretends to give a clear message to  the youth about staying away from addictions and vandalism. 

The film does an excellent job in portraying how choosing  this path can end with the life of a young person. It shows  how sometimes the bad influence of troubled family members  and friends can change a person’s future forever.

Ratas, ratones y rateros invites the world to take a peek at the  life of poor societies in Latin America. 

South Africa: Totsi (2005)

Tsotsi means gangster in the street language of South African ghetto. The protagonist of the film has been stripped of his real name and calls himself that way. A 19 year old orphan with no ties to the past and no future plans. At his young age he is already a gang leader marked by instincts that do not feel compassion for anyone. He lives his life being bad and hurting people without even feeling any regrets. At least, that’s what everyone around him thinks of him. But one day in one of his assaults, he crosses paths with a three months old baby and it is then when his road towards hope and redemption begins. Through the baby, he rediscovers tenderness and innocence. The audience is able to observe his slow but powerful transformation. It is story that develops at the outsides of a city in South Africa.

One of the themes that this film offers is how poverty and prejudice creates the new criminals. This film offers the audience characters of different social classes and shows how all of them are prejudiced against their fellow citizens in one way or another. Throughout the movie it is easy to observe how these characters way of seeing the world gets in the way of their possibility of living harmoniously with society, but specially with themselves.

Through out Totsi’s way of being and expressions it is easy to see how he is resented with society because he feels he never had a chance of being someone better. He is resented with the world because he hasn't found a place for himself.

What is interesting to see in this character is that all his feelings against discrimination make him a discriminator himself. He is not able to look at things from a more soft point of view . He is aggressive and he doesn’t care about anything.

The audience is able to see his character flourish into a new beginning when he starts letting himself feel again through the attachment he creates with the baby. His heart is clearly touched and this brings him to understand that his unhappiness is no motif to make other innocent people unhappy. We can see how he is a new man when he returns the baby and feels happy to see him back with his family.

Living in society is not an easy task, but the only way of living in peace is by opening our minds and specially our hearts among each other. Beautiful Movie!

Brazil: Central Station (1998)

Central Station is a Brazilian film directed by Walter Salles and starring: Fernanda Montenegro (Dora), Vinicius de oliveira (Josué), Marilia Pèra (Irene) and Soia Lira (Ana).

The film takes place in the suffocating corridors of the Central Station in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. One of the main characters is Dora, a former teacher that earns her living by writing letters dictated to her by illiterate people who come to her while at the station. Hardened by loneliness, adversity and the daily flow of desperate faces that pass through the station, Dora has developed an indifference towards people and doesn’t value the importance of her mission. When one of her clients dies leaving her little son Josue behind, Dora’s heart starts to open again. At the beginning she wants nothing to do with the boy, but eventually she decides to help him since she realizes he is absolutely alone in this world. She agrees to accompany him on a journey to find his father. She travels with him to a remote area of northeastern Brazil. 

As the story continues, both boy and woman become attached and develop a special almost mother-son relationship with each other. They both discover they need each other in order to change their actual existence. 

Central Station presents many social themes through out the movie. It places us in front to the limitations and difficulties of a significant portion of the population of the country Brazil. It also shows us the lack of appropriate responses from the government to the satisfaction of basic needs. Far from the stereotypical images of Rio de Janeiro's festive Carnival, the film confronts us with problems like the absence of a policy of care for children at risk. The same situation that Josue goes through  after the death of his mother is lived by many other children since there appears not to be public institutions that take care of these type of cases properly.

Central Station touched my heart in a very special way. It has certainly become one of my favorite movies. It was so heart warming to see how the innocence and sincerity of a child was able to break the barries that Dora had construct around her in order to avoid loving or showing the tender part of her being. The transformation that the woman goes through is invaluable and the message that the story leaves is wonderful. It is important that adults learn from children that it is never late to love and give to another person because what you get in return may be much bigger. THUMBS UP!

Cuba: Strawberry and Chocolate (1994)

Strawberry and Chocolate is a powerful movie that dares to  deal with the theme of homosexuality back in the day when it was strongly condemn by most of the world specially in latin cultures. 

The story takes place in La Havana, Cuba in 1970. It focuses on David, a homophobic college student, for whom the concepts of right and wrong are put into dilemma when he becomes friends with Diego (Jorge Perugorria), a gay artist. 

Although developed in a totally sexist society, the film focuses on the relationship between these two men and how what in the beginning was a feeling of disrespect and antagonism from David to Diego, turns around to a relationship of admiration and tolerance.

David is a revolutionary and also a college student in Havana. One day while eating chocolate ice cream he is interrupted by Diego, a gay artist in his 40 who is clearly gay and prefers a strawberry ice cream. David flirts with Diego, and regardless to Diego’s denial, he convinces him to come to his apartment to pick up some pictures that David took of him while acting on a play. In the apartment while looking for the pictures Diego is captivated by  David’s way of living. The artist has foreign literature which is banned in Cuba and Diego is very interested in Literature. He also has many religious paintings and an interesting conversation. 

David leaves the place when he realizes that Diego plans to do an art show with the help of a foreign embassy, because he thinks that such action is counter-revolutionary.

David goes in search of his revolutionary friend Miguel and tells him what had happened at the home of Diego. Miguel is a prejudiced man and according to him the revolution was not fought for homosexuals. Therefore, Miguel wants to compromise Diego, and suggests David to visit more often Din order to get more information and evidence. 

However, these visits transform the relationship between Diego and David as they unexpectedly become very good friends. By knowing more about about Diego, David starts to value him as a person and starts to put aside their differences. In the end of the movie, politics are stronger and Diego is forced to leave the island of Cuba, but the transformation both Diego and David experience through their friendship gives a lot of value to the story.

The most important theme of the story is how prejudice can be overcome by getting to know people at a deeper level. People are so used to judging other s by their preferences without realizing that they have so much to offer regardless of their personal choices and tastes.

I believe Strawberry and Chocolate is a perfect name for this film. It portrays perfectly the fact that people have different tastes an some like strawberry ice cream better than the chocolate one but that doesn’t make them better than the other.

People nowadays are starting to become more opened about homosexuality and that is a great advance. It would be so important to strive to teach people and specially children about acceptance an tolerance. Discrimination needs to be abolished forever so the world can live in peace.

Wonderful story! Great message!!

Iran: Children of Heaven (1995)

Children of Heaven was written and directed by Majid Majidi. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998.

The characters in this story are ZAHRA and  ALI. The story begins when Ali loses his sister's shoes after picking them up from being repaired. Right from the very first scenes, the audience is able to determine that Ail and his family are very poor. He gets back home to his very ill mother and his young sister who has been waiting anxiously for him to bring back her shoes. To her surprise, Ail tells her that he had lost them and asks her to please don’t tell their parents. Through the interaction between the children, it is able to determine that their father would have gotten very upset with them if he found out what had happened.

Zahra agrees to keep the secret and the kids realize that there is not another solution than for her to wear Ali's shoes to school in the morning and given them back to Ail when he has to go to school later in the day. This arrangement portrays the extreme of poverty of their family. They just had one pair of old and dirty shoes for each of the children and now there was just one.  

Zahra does not really like the idea, but her heart would let her uncover his brother and get him in trouble. 

The plot of the story takes place around this situation. The children struggle to make the arrangement work, but it is definitely not an easy task. Zahra studied in the morning and had to literarily run in order to be able to give her brother the shoes so that he can then run to his school. As it is easy to imaging, the situation didn’t really worked that successfully. Ali was late to class most of the days and he gets in trouble with the principal of the school. Thankfully, he was known to be a very good and responsible student and he gets the opportunity of a second chance.

The story keeps developing around the challenges of the children and their family to survive under economical struggle and the effort of the children to deal with the shoes situation. The audience is touched by the love that these children show for each other.

The story takes a turn when Ali realizes that there is a running contest where one of the awards includes a pair of brand new shoes. He commits himself to get into the race and win those shoes for his sister. The love and commitment to making his sister happy is evident and heartwarming.

The themes that can be the highlight of the film Children of Heaven are: The real love and solidarity between siblings, the struggle between social classes, and the little amount of  communication there is between parents and children in some cultures. The movie clearly portrays how because of the fear of a scolding the children prefer to team up and remain silent. You can also see that women have to keep some respect and obey the men in what they decide.

Beyond that, the film reflects the desire to succeed doesn’t necessarily destroys every man’s values. The father of the children let’s see that he is a man with values and with honesty. He helps his community even though  he could be using that time to finding a job, he is an example for his children.

Personally, I loved the movie. It touched my heart in so many different ways. It is a movie that makes you smile, laugh, cry, worry and smile again. It shows you the real meaning of love; it shows you what really matters in life. A wonderful movie, without a doubt.

Spain: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spanish: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios) is a 1988 Spanish film written and directed by Pedro Almodovar, starring Carmen Maura, Fernando Guillen and Antonio Banderas. 

Pepa and Ivan are voice actors. Thanks to his career, Ivan has had access to the most beautiful women in film and television and he has had unstable relationships with many of them. The problem is that non of them have been the only ones. After a long relationship with Pepa, he breaks up with her by leaving a message on the answering machine asking her to prepare a bag with his things.Pepa becomes depressed about the situation and decides to rent the apartment were she lives because she can not deal with all the memories. 

The story becomes funny and unexpected when Ivan fails to get a hold of Pepa and she is not able not get in touch with him either. They keep missing each others phone calls and the whole plot of the story transforms into a fight between the characters and the phone.

Pepa becomes obsessed with finding Ivan and telling him that she has just learned that she is pregnant, while at the same time her house starts filling up with different people that somehow end up connected with each other. Through them, Pepa learns a lot about loneliness and madness and also learns some secrets about Ivan that she completely ignored.

One of the main themes of the movie is without a doubt “the return to self” that Pepa and some of the other actors in the story are invited to experience. It is interesting to observe how all the different women that Ivan has been involved to have a common denominator: they have been lied to. Ivan portrays the typical unstable man that believes he is aloud to do anything he wants just because he is a famous actor and has “the looks”. He is clearly a guy that doesn’t care about betraying or hurting this women and uses his power over them to have them under his spell.

I believe the importance of the movie, is that it lets us observe the different ways these women handle the situation. One of the women becomes completely insane, the other one stays with him still under his spell, and Pepa is actually able to realize the type of guy Ivan was and decided to break free of that situation.

All the other characters in the movie are also important pieces to the story in one way or another. Their particular situations reinforce the learning experience that Pepa needs to go through in order to be able to become the woman we see at the end of the movie. A woman that has understand that her life goes beyond a man that cheated and lied to her with any contemplation and that she has a more important and transcending purpose in her own life and the life of  others.

Pedro Almodovar makes himself heard and felt through this work. BRAVO!

Italy: Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Cinema Paradiso, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, produced by Franco Cristaldi and starring Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi and Jacques Perrin is considered a master piece by many. 

This Italian-French film from 1988, is the story of life in a small Sicilian village after the Second World War. It deals with the memories of a man, Toto, about his childhood and his relationship with the world of cinema. 

His interest in films begins when he is very young and he learns everything he knows from his friend Alfredo, an old man who works showing films at Cinema Paradiso. Alfredo's passion for cinema is transmitted to the child, who becomes his successor. After a fatal fire at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo loses his sight, Toto has the opportunity to work at Cinema Paradiso and becomes an expert in the field. Toto spent his childhood and part of his youth in his village, where the only entertainment is the cinema, but when he gets older, and after completing a year of military service, Alfredo encourages him to emigrate to Rome so that he can prosper and build a better life for himself. In Rome, Toto succeeds in his career and his life certainly improves from an economical perspective. However, the introduction of the film lets the audience perceive that he hasn't found happiness since he lives an empty life and hasn’t found someone to truly love. When he receives a message from his mother letting him know that Alfredo has died, Toto appears to have a “wake up call” about his life. He starts remembering and life seems to explode into thousands of different situations through every image. 

Cinema Paradise was a heartwarming movie, that delicately invites the viewer to a self-examination of his/her life. I truly belief that every single human being has an specific and important purpose in life, but unfortunately not many people give deep thought to this idea. They live their days in a survival mode doing everything they can to be successful and make more money because they think that’s what life is all about. They never stop to think even for a second about why they are here or why they have been put in contact with certain people or circumstances. Sometimes the only way for them to realize they are wasting their lives is by experiencing the death of someone they really care about like Toto. I think that is precisely the theme and the message that the movie wanted to expose. That sometimes we are so worried about having a happy and successful life that we forget what it is to be truly happy.